The Conservatives will certainly hope so and are looking to make the economy the key battleground between now and May 7.

Gross domestic product in the UK – the total size of the economy – plunged 6 per cent in the Great Recession under Labour but has increased by more than 8 per cent under the Coalition.

David Cameron and George Osborne boast that they have taken Britain from the brink of disaster to become the fastest-growing major economy in the developed world.

More impressive still is the so-called ‘jobs miracle’ that the Prime Minister and Chancellor have presided over since 2010.

Unemployment has fallen from nearly 8 per cent to 5.7 per cent after soaring under Labour and there are now a record 30.9m people in work, an increase of 1.9m, or 1,000 a day, since the last election.

And living standards are back above where they were in 2010 – blunting Labour claims that families are worse off.

But the question posed by Ronald Reagan in the US election of 1980 – ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ – will still play a central role in this election.

So too will the public finances and what they mean for taxes and spending over the next five years. Borrowing has fallen under the Coalition – from Labour’s record £153bn in 2009-10 to around £90bn in 2014-15.

But this is still well above the £37bn Osborne planned in 2010.

Just how the next government balances the books will be a crucial test of its success or otherwise in the next Parliament.

‘Though all of the main parties continue to talk tough on the deficit and preach the need for further austerity, a comparison of their actual policies reveals bigger differences between their fiscal plans than for many years,’ explains Andrew Goodwin at Oxford Economics.

Here we look at Tory and Labour attitudes towards business and plans for the deficit, the national debt, taxes and spending.

Business

Three-and-a-half years after leader Ed Miliband divided companies into ‘producers’ and ‘predators’, Labour’s relationship with UK plc is at rock bottom.

A survey of FTSE 100 bosses last weekend showed 70 per cent believe a Miliband government would be a ‘catastrophe’ for the economy – echoing the criticism levelled at the Labour leader by Boots chief Stefano Pessina.

Labour has used its opposition to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union – as promised by the Tories – in a bid to win over business.

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But while many multinationals are furious with Conservative plans to hold a vote by 2017, other businesses back the decision.

‘Without true reform, business support for the European project is far from guaranteed,’ is how John Longworth, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, puts it.

The Tories and Labour have also clashed over business taxes.

Corporation tax has been cut from 28 per cent to 20 per cent by the Coalition and Osborne has pledged to keep it there – making it the joint lowest in the G20 alongside Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

But Labour plans to raise it to 21 per cent to pay for a tax break for smaller firms via business rates.

Miliband and Ed Balls have only pledged to keep corporation tax the lowest in the G7 – meaning it could rise towards 26.5 per cent, which is the rate charged in Canada, the second most competitive country in the G7.

Deficit

The Tories plan to eliminate the deficit and return Britain to the black in 2018-19 with a surplus of £5.2bn, the first since 2001.

Cameron and Osborne plan to continue to run a surplus in the good years although they have cut the size of the one planned for 2019-20 from £23bn to £7bn.

Labour is targeting a different deficit however – the deficit on the ‘current’ budget – which it plans to get into surplus by 2020.

But a surplus on the current budget, which only accounts for day-to-day government spending, still leaves Labour free to borrow to invest in infrastructure.

According to analysis of Labour plans by the Treasury, this could mean nearly £140bn of extra borrowing over the course of the next Parliament under Labour, including a deficit of almost £39bn in 2019-20 as opposed to a surplus.

Debt

The national debt is still rising in cash terms and is due to top £1.6trillion, having soared from around £300bn to £975bn under Labour and then to nearly £1.5trillion under the Coalition.

In the Budget last month, the last before polling day, Osborne said the debt would fall to 80.2 per cent of GDP this year having peaked at 80.4 per cent in 2014-15.

That, says Osborne, brings to an end 13 years of rising debts since early this century when ‘spending got out of control’ under Labour.

‘Those 13 years amount to the longest year-on-year rise in our national debt since the end of the 17th century,’ the Chancellor argues. Under his plans the debt is due to fall to 71.6 per cent in 2019-20.

Labour’s more cautious approach to cutting the annual deficit could add billions of pounds to the national debt. It could be as high as 77.7 per cent under Labour in 2019-20, according to the Treasury analysis, with an extra £5.7bn of interest payments over the course of the Parliament.

The higher national debt would leave Britain vulnerable to another crisis but it would allow Labour to plough more money into the public services.

Austerity

Osborne says he can balance the books with another £30bn of savings by 2017-18. He is targeting £13bn of cuts from Whitehall departments, £12bn from the welfare bill and £5bn from clamping down on tax avoidance.

However, the Tories have not outlined where the cuts will fall. Cameron and Osborne are also committed to £7bn of income tax cuts by raising the personal allowance to £12,500 and the 40p higher rate threshold to £50,000 by 2020.

Labour is planning less severe cuts to public spending but the Tories claim this will result in higher taxes, higher borrowing and higher debts.

Labour has already committed to raising the top rate of income tax from 45 per cent to 50 per cent, a mansion tax, and higher corporation tax. It seems likely that Labour will also drag more people into paying 40 per cent income tax, in a raid on the middle classes.

Matthew Whittaker, chief economist at the Resolution Foundation, says the differences between Tory and Labour plans are ‘highly significant’ but adds that voters are still in the dark over exactly what the parties would do.

‘All parties still need to close the candour deficit and spell out what their fiscal targets mean for taxes, welfare and the shape of public services,’ he says.

Such candour, however, is unlikely. ‘It’s a terrible shame to be going into an election without any detail of how the cuts are going to be achieved,’ says Paul Johnson at the IFS.

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Who will spend what? Labour and Conservative economic plans could hold the key to Number Ten